Choosing a Pastor-President

Today's post comes from Barton Price, assistant professor of history at Grand Valley State University and one of the many terrific PhDs from Florida State University. He has an article coming out in Methodist History titled "The.Cental Christian Advocate and the Quest for a Heartland Identity in American Methodism, 1852-1900."

Choosing a Pastor-President to Care for the Soul and
Souls of the Nation

In the aftermath of the tragic shooting at a movie theater
in Aurora, Colorado, both President Barack Obama and Republican frontrunner
Mitt Romney suspended their presidential campaigns for a few days. In that
time, President Obama visited with surviving
victims and the families of the deceased. I suggest that this action offers a
different timbre to the presidential race of 2012, one that adds a religious
dimension to the election. What the action represents is the nation’s selection
of a president-pastor.

President Obama’s visitation with survivors is not an
unwelcomed action. It shows his compassion for these families and for his
constituents. As he stated, he came not as the President but as “a father and
as a husband.” This illustrates Obama’s populism. But it is, on one level, an
act akin to the pastoral offices of many American clergy. Following the
visitation, Obama offered biblical verses
as consoling axioms to heal the nation’s wounds. His speech was a sermon of
sorts. What intrigues me about Obama’s activities in response to the Aurora
shooting is that they are peripheral to his presidential duties, but they have
become integral to the extra-constitutional job description for the President
of the United States of America. These duties often involve activities that
mirror those of a pastor. If these duties are now part of the unwritten role of
the President, then they prompt us to ask who is the better president-pastor.

Presidential elections often involve issues that have little
to do with public policy and the administration thereof. While the Constitution prescribes that the President’s job is
to execute the laws written by Congress, the American electorate is also
interested in the character of the candidates. This has been the case since the
election of 1800. In that election, Federalists pointed to the heterodoxy of
Thomas Jefferson. Since 1828, when the popular vote had greater influence after
the extension of universal white male suffrage, the character of the
presidential candidate has continued to be of greater importance, sometimes
more than the pressing issues themselves. This year’s election is no different,
and it pits the two main candidates—Obama and Romney—in ethical and moral
terms.

Likewise, for many denominations in the United
States—particularly those with a congregational model—the selection of pastors
is an electoral process. In many denominational parlances, persons being
considered for a pastoral position are referred to as “candidates” who
“campaign” for a job. This should come as no surprise since many of the
congregational style denominations developed denominational and local
congregational “constitutions” that include a legislative branch (i.e. church
board, or general denominational convention) and an executive branch (i.e.
local pastor, or denominational governing board). So, denominations act very
much the local and national electoral processes. It should come as no surprise,
then, that many Americans approach governmental elections with similar ideas
and values as they do when choosing who leads their congregations and their
denominations.

So, who is the better candidate for the national
president-pastor? If we look simply at the candidate who has experience in
pastoral duties, then it would have to be Romney. Romney’s time serving as a bishop in
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints involved activities that are
pastoral in nature. Yet Obama’s tenure as a community organizer is quite
similar to the activities of many African-American pastors who are active in
community-oriented services, many of which are funneled through local
congregations or through community organizations involving many congregations
within a neighborhood. Either way, we see that the American people are choosing
a candidate whose personal history involves quasi-pastoral episodes. The point
of my observations, then, is not to decide who is the better
pastor-president. It is to reveal that many times the extra-constitutional
duties of the President ask the American people to choose a candidate that
cares for the soul and the souls of this nation.

Comments

Interesting things to think about here! I have noticed that on Barack Obama's facebook page (a very thinly veiled Obama-remembering-campaign for his reelection campaign), practically every day they post another picture of the Obama family as a prototypical (and of course, perfect) American family.

Perhaps intertwined with the pastoral identity of a president is this fatherly identity...https://www.facebook.com/barackobama

It must be a matter of perspective. Where the poster sees caring for the souls of a nation, I see cynical pandering to the voters. It is a basic fact of life that many voters would never vote for a non-Christian no matter what the candidates position on matters relevant to the office. If you want to get elected, you better cite scripture. Consequently, I sometimes find it difficult to know whether to believe the candidate holds Christian principles or not.

I've seen a term of Obama as president, but I don't know what to expect of Romney. He doesn't talk about his faith very explicitly. Obviously he does not want to draw attention to any of the Mormon beliefs that would alarm mainstream Christians, but he could show us a little more. (I say "mainstream" to avoid getting into whether Mormons are really Christian or not.) For example, I wonder did he become a priest (a prerequisite to bishop in the Mormon church) for his faith, or because that is what ambitious Mormon men do?